Love Ridden
by drosier
Summary: Oneshot. When Severus possesses a bit of power, he's tempted to abuse it. One-sided Severus/Lily. Marauder's Era.


**Notes:** Set the summer just before Lily breaks her friendship with Severus.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own_ Harry Potter._

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Love-Ridden

I.

His ability as a wizard is undeniably impressive--potentially dangerous.

It's from his mother that Severus hears this first; with her bony hand running through his hair like twigs caught in rain-soaked cobwebs, she speaks to him of possession, never neglecting to lament his inheriting her looks and unfortunate condition.

He thinks of this later, in a dingy basement where he drifts around his cauldron with springy, wet smoke that smells of Lily Evans' skin, creating possibility from thoughts which began formless and scattered as soot, building until his walls were buckling in desperation.

Severus wants her more than the power conveyed through the mastery of a Dark spell, more than the power promised to him in exchange for his allegiance to a rising Dark Lord and a mark branded on his arm.

Still, he is drawn to both; after all, isn't one a necessity in obtaining the other? The fact seems to apply tenfold when someone like James Potter, who, though possessing simpler motives, has everything Severus lacks intact as a birthright and much of the same intentions for Lily.

Though even as the potion breathes temptation--breathes a form of power that is indelibly exhilarating itself--it is the process Severus is after: the challenge and experience of brewing something as complex as Amortentia; and with that, comes the thin, fleeting facade of potential fulfilment.

He would never feed it to Lily. Severus thinks this, and yet he ladles the potion into a glass vial, watching it fall like melted-down pearls.

He wants her.

II.

Lily traipses heavily through the rushing water, her skirt rucked high up at her thighs. Pockets thick with sweets hover like full moons at her sides, and she moves carelessly as the shallow river shoulders past, sloshing by like the great, shifting muscles of hundreds of hoofed things; she falls at their feet, though not gracelessly.

When she tips her head back to laugh, the lines of her face going soft as the edges of her hair drag through the water, she looks amused enough to counter a bit of Severus' initial concern. He goes to her, getting his rucked-up trousers wet in the process where he was so careful before.

A small gesture, sure, through when Lily places her hand in the crook of Severus' arm as he anxiously helps her up, that place where she lays her fingers seems to harbour the only heat in him.

Lily jabs him with her elbow and facetiously calls him a fussbudget when they step up onto the muddy bank where they had previously thrown their shoes, and Severus quirks an eyebrow the way she says makes him resemble something of the cartoons she made him sit through a couple of years prior.

She laughs as she steps into the sparsely-distributed shade laid out by a few of the younger trees, wringing out her hair and skirt, and he never wants to look away. Lily is beautiful, he knows; he's always known.

She's new parchment, white rabbit's fur newly washed with lavender soap, and the delicate heart beating beneath. She's the first spark of a lit match and crisp, morning air. She's bold, and she's right, and she's intelligent, and she's _good. _

Something within him clenches in dull reminder, pushing those perpetual feelings of longing to the surface, and Severus feels the vial he inexplicably pocketed colder now.

Of course, Lily has always warmed him with an intensity to rival her bright hair, only leaving his bones aching and frigid in her absence. He knows she could destroy him with the right combination of words, and even then, he would still fall all over himself for her

He needs her.

III.

Her skirt clings, wet and heavy, to her thighs where she is sprawled lazily over warm grass beside Severus, her damp hair against her throat like crushed rose petals in an alabaster pestle. She mumbles softly of Transfiguration and apologizes for letting their sweets wash away with the river, like it were any other time but summer so the two thoughts could have something to do with each other.

The words rise and fall and fade out until her eyelids droop like heavy, red-fringed blankets.

Peering down at her sleepy face, Severus thinks of maybes: red hair curling around his fingers like vines, Lily's grinning face tilting towards his—a pearly, glass-contained liquid that whispers an unbearably dormant possibility.

If it were but a drop--only _one_.

He wonders this from the hollowed-out place that knows only nonfulfillment and the endless strain of a constantly-trampled heart.

Before Severus can register what he is doing, his fingers make a clumsy fumble for the cork stopping the vial in his pocket, and his fingertips are soaked with the potion.

He thinks once again of possession, thinks, _It's all I've got._

Light falls gracelessly through trees overhead to spread over Lily in a whisper of scattered diamonds, and she appears serene, eyelids now fully closed to cloak the bright green of her eyes. Severus reaches toward her, and the scent of Amortentia hanging so near to her tips her face toward him like a drunk and drowsy flower pressing to the beckoning fingers of the sun.

Severus pauses, startled, as his name passes her lips in question, dragging sluggishly against his wet fingertips: her words are like steam from a sweet tea, though it's a hollow sound, like winds through the bones of a bird; only bones that would shatter to reveal nectar pouring from within.

She speaks his name again, "_Severus_" this time, rather than the abbreviated "Sev," and his pulse pounds in his ears as his hand trembles and moves to touch her mouth. Today, Lily Evans could reach back.

Lily remains tranquil and unruffled, her face entirely free of any expressive creases, as Severus wrenches his hand away, turning roughly to plunge his fingers into the warm soil beside him.

He sinks lower into himself, into the ground, as Lily yawns drowsily, saying to him that it is so peaceful she could lie there for an eternity; Severus feels her body shift beside his and only grits his teeth to keep from trembling as the hopelessness of it all brushes every part of him.

He thinks of Sisyphus forever rolling a stone up a hill, of crushed rose petals in an alabaster pestle, of Lily's hand in the crook of arm.

And her eyes, bright and expressive.

It's a hunger he abhors, yet he bears it for her.

He loves her.

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Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are always appreciated.

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